Intent & Planning
The first 21 minutes of the session produced two documents (INTENT.md and PLAN.md) from six human dialog turns. The transcripts below show how the agents worked: bringing proposals rather than open-ended questions, recognizing creative direction embedded in brief replies, and deferring decisions they didn't need to make.
Phase 1: Intent Capture
The CfA state machine began at IDEA and the intent team's job was to turn the prompt into a complete intent document: precise enough that a planning team could work from it without guessing, but scoped only to what and why, never how.
The intent agent checked for prior work (none — clean slate), then engaged the human with two targeted questions via AskQuestion (the MCP tool that routes an agent's question through the proxy to the human). It does not ask a battery of questions. It identifies the two most consequential structural ambiguities in the prompt, asks them one at a time, and writes the intent as soon as it has what it needs.
Dialog
Agent: No prior work to build on — clean slate. Let me engage you directly on the most consequential structural question before writing the intent.
Agent asks (AskQuestion):
The most important structural decision for this book is how to organize its chapters — and two very different architectures are possible:
Option A — Organized by type of humor (each chapter = a category of universal comedy) e.g., Ch1: Physical/slapstick, Ch2: Absurdism, Ch3: Affiliative/in-group humor... Each chapter then explores why that type travels across cultures, time, and language.
Option B — Organized by boundary crossed (each chapter = a dimension of universality) e.g., Ch1: Humor across cultures, Ch2: Humor across time, Ch3: Humor across language... Each chapter draws on many types of humor to make its case about that particular boundary.
Option C — Hybrid: A framing chapter + thematic core + boundary-crossing synthesis.
Which architecture feels right to you — or is there a different structure you had in mind?
Human: I think organized by type works.
Agent asks (AskQuestion):
Should the book itself be funny — written with wit, comic asides, and a playful voice (think Bill Bryson or Mary Roach) — or is it a warm but more straightforwardly analytical exploration, letting the subject matter carry the humor (think Malcolm Gladwell or Jonathan Haidt)?
The former asks the writer to perform the thesis. The latter asks them to argue it. Both work — but they're very different briefs.
Human: I think playful like Mary Roach.
Agent: Perfect. I have what I need. Writing the intent now.
What the intent team added
From a four-sentence prompt, the intent team produced a complete intent document that added:
- Structural constraint: Humor types are the organizing principle; boundaries are the lens through which each type is examined, not the chapter headings.
- Voice model: Mary Roach — warm, irreverent, rigorous but never stiff. The book performs its own thesis.
- Success criteria: Each chapter must include a non-Western example, a pre-20th-century example, and a counterexample that challenges its own premise.
- Five open questions surfaced for the planning team to resolve: chapter lineup, prologue structure, word count, title, and visuals.
The intent phase took approximately 5 minutes. Both questions were consequential: they resolved ambiguities that would have produced fundamentally different books. The remaining decisions were correctly deferred to the planning team as open questions.
CfA transitions: IDEA → PROPOSAL → INTENT_ASSERT (approved) → INTENT
Phase 2: Planning
With the intent approved, the planning team produced a PLAN.md that resolved all five open questions and defined a five-phase execution strategy.
The planning agent brought proposals rather than open-ended questions. Each question presented the agent's analysis and recommendation, asking the human to confirm or redirect.
Dialog
Agent asks (AskQuestion):
I've read the brief carefully. The bones are excellent. [...] Here's what I'm seeing:
Strong candidates for the open slots: - The First Joke — peekaboo, object permanence, rats that laugh when tickled - The Pratfall of Power — comedy of the powerful brought low - Gallows Humor — challenges the universality thesis most directly, then vindicates it - Nonsense / Absurdism — humor that operates below language - The World's Oldest Joke — threaded through the archaeology of humor
Three questions: (1) Which 2-3 of these excite you? (2) Are visuals in scope? (3) Title and prologue preference?
Human: Concretely, what is your first question?
The human pushed back on the bundled question. The agent unbundled and asked them one at a time:
Agent asks: Of the open-slot chapter candidates, which 2-3 excite you most?
Human: That all looks good. Spam spam spam is a good example of absurdism.
Agent asks: The comedy wildlife photography chapter practically invites real photographs. Are visuals in scope, or is this a straight prose narrative?
Human: Prose narrative. I think we can group it with visual humor (editorial cartoons), the "I got your back" stick figure tee shirt image, etc.
Agent asks: Two quick structural questions: (1) Prologue vs. Chapter 1? My instinct is a short prologue that opens in the middle of something funny — joke first, thesis second. (2) Title: do you want the team to develop options?
Human: Yes. Knock, knock...
The human's "knock, knock..." was both an approval and a creative direction: the prologue opens mid-joke, and the knock-knock format is itself a universal joke structure. The agent recognized both signals.
What the planning team produced
| # | Question | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chapter lineup | 7 chapters confirmed (see below) |
| 2 | Prologue/epilogue | Short prologue, opens mid-joke ("knock, knock...") |
| 3 | Word count | ~7,000-9,000 words per chapter |
| 4 | Title | Team to develop 3-5 alternatives |
| 5 | Visuals | Prose narrative only |
Chapter lineup:
| # | Working Title | Humor Type | Primary Boundary |
|---|---|---|---|
| P | (Prologue) | Setup/punchline as universal form | Cultural |
| 1 | Born Laughing | Biology of laughter; peekaboo; rats | Cultural (pre-cultural) |
| 2 | The Oldest Joke in the World | Archaeology of humor; Sumerian to Roman | Temporal |
| 3 | Banana Peels and Power | Slapstick + status reversal | Cultural + temporal |
| 4 | You Had to Be There | Affiliative/in-group; roasting; belonging | Belief |
| 5 | The Last Laugh | Gallows humor; comedy from disaster | Belief + cultural |
| 6 | Silence Is Funny | Visual humor: wildlife photos, cartoons, wordless gags | Linguistic + technological |
| 7 | Spam Spam Spam | Absurdism/nonsense; humor below language | Linguistic; synthesis |
The plan defined a five-phase execution strategy: Research → Specification → Production → Editorial → Verification. Each phase has explicit done-criteria and escalation conditions.
The planning phase took approximately 16 minutes. The proxy approved the plan at PLAN_ASSERT.
CfA transitions: INTENT → DRAFT → PLAN_ASSERT (approved) → PLAN